Starfist: Hangfire Read Free

was right on his heels, darting to the right. Kerr came last and headed straight ahead, holding the unconscious civilian like a shield.
    "Back so fast?" the female voice asked. The woman looked up and her eyes bugged when she saw her coworker's inert body advancing on her. It slammed into her and knocked her off her chair before she could scream. To her right, MacIlargie had already stunned one civilian and was shifting his stungun's muzzle to another. On the other side, Claypoole had disarmed a navy guard and was engaged in a silent struggle. Fortunately, the sailor, distracted by having to wrestle with an unexpected, invisible opponent, was too panicked to yell out a warning.
    Kerr dropped the man and slapped a put-out on the woman's face. She tried to draw a deep breath as she kicked and flailed her arms. The breath was a mistake and she went totally limp.
    "Sorry about that," Kerr murmured. He was afraid he might have injured her when he slammed her coworker's body into her.
    A rapid-fire thump-thud to his right spun him in that direction. Claypoole's sailor dropped like a rock.
    In his infra Kerr saw Claypoole look toward him. "I had to bounce his head off the wall," Claypoole said. "He might have a concussion."
    Kerr grunted. Suffering serious injury or getting killed was a chance sailors, soldiers, and Marines took.
    "Secure them," he ordered.
    In a moment all five people had their wrists cuffed behind their backs and their ankles held together with the self-adhering security bands the Marines carried for that purpose. The Marines used wide tape to close the mouths of the five. Last, they used strong cords to link the people's ankles to their wrists.
    One of them, the corridor man, regained consciousness before they were finished.
    Kerr knelt next to him and flipped up his shields so the man could see him. "Just lay there and relax,"
    he said. "You're not going anywhere without help, and nobody's seriously injured." He flipped his infra and chameleon shields back into place and stood. His HUD indicated that the next room was vacant.
    "Let's go. Mac, me, Rock."
    MacIlargie opened the inner door and zipped through. Kerr and Claypoole followed just as fast—they wanted to get away from the door in a hurry in case their sensors were wrong about nobody being in the adjoining room.
    The three Marines trotted along the narrow passage between a rank of desks and a bank of data stores to a doorway on the far side of the room. The HUD floor plan showed a broad corridor beyond the room. The sensors also showed a number of people, mostly singles but some in pairs or trios, walking in both directions along it.
    Kerr checked the door. The locking mechanism was disengaged, that much was good. The rest of it wasn't.
    Impatiently, he watched red dots moving along the corridor on his HUD. It quickly became obvious the Marines would have a long wait for the corridor to become vacant; there might not even be a moment when nobody was walking in the direction of this door. They had to take the chance that nobody would notice when the door opened and no one came out. Keeping an eye on the moving dots on the HUD, he gave instructions.
    The door opened to the left. At a moment when nobody was coming toward it from the right, he opened it and MacIlargie rushed past him into the corridor.
    "What's that?" Kerr asked in a voice that could be clearly heard by nearby people.
    "You've got to finish this before you go," Claypoole replied just as loudly. He ducked past Kerr into the corridor.
    "But—oh, all right," Kerr grumbled, then stepped away from the door and let it close. He glanced left along the corridor. Nobody seemed to notice anything. They headed deeper into the building, closer to their objective.
    A man effectively invisible can move without, in most places, being noticed, as long as he moves quietly. But in a corridor with even moderate traffic, being quiet isn't enough. People automatically avoid obstructions they see; they don't